In what way a ‘Guarantee for youth’?

In the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2009 and its negative effects on youth unemployment, the European Union developed and put in place the European Youth Guarantee.

This study employs a Geographical Political Economy approach to analyse the Youth Guarantees underpinnings and conditions which have an impact on its application on a regional level. Through this, this research tries to analyse how the Youth Guarantee is assisting young people in Southern EU Member States to enter the labour market. Comparing regions from Spain and Italy and supplementing quantitative analysis with in-depth interviews with, this study finds that Youth Guarantee implementation is closely linked to regional inequalities and labour precarity reflected in the growing rates of temporary employment and inactive youth.

Research paper authored by Effie Emmanouil, Andrew Herod, Kostas Gourzis and Stelios Gialis, Youth labour markets in the Southern European Union, 2009-2021: deciphering trajectories of resilience through a decade of consecutive crises, Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography 123:2 (2023).